AAAA Records

What's an AAAA resource record? What function do AAAA records serve? Should you include one to your site?

Each device that's connected to the web has a unique identifier called IP (Internet Protocol) address. This includes personal computers, web servers, smartphones, switches, etc. The pool of addresses, that was introduced at first, has already been distributed, so the so-called IPv4 IP addresses are steadily being replaced with IPv6 addresses. Every domain name that opens a website comes with an IP record, that is the address of the server where it is hosted. When using the IPv4 system, the record is called A and it consists of four groups of numbers from 1 to 255 separated by a dot, while with the IPv6 system it's called AAAA and it comprises of eight groups of hexadecimal numbers i.e. this kind of records use digits from 0 to 9 and letters from A to F. A good example of an AAAA record is 2010:0c48:43d3:2142:1012:8c3a:2475:2435 and this format is designed for a substantially greater amount of IPs in comparison with the IPv4 format.

If you use a service with a third-party provider and you have to set up an AAAA record to forward a domain address or a subdomain to their system, you will be able to do that with just a couple of clicks through the Hepsia CP, which comes with all of our cloud hosting plans. Once you sign in, you have to navigate to the DNS Records section where you are going to find all of the records for every domain or subdomain hosted within the account. Setting up a new record is as easy as clicking on a button, choosing the type from a drop-down menu, which will be AAAA in this case, and then entering the value, or the actual IPv6 address, inside a text box. As an added option you are able to change the TTL value (Time To Live), that outlines how long the record will be active after you edit it or delete it in the future. The new AAAA record is going to be active in no more than an hour and will propagate worldwide a couple of hours later, so the hostname for which you have created it will start redirecting to the new hosting server.

Setting up a new AAAA record is very easy using our user-friendly Hepsia hosting CP, so if you host a domain address inside a semi-dedicated server account from our company and you want such a record either for it or for a subdomain that you've set up under it, you are going to be able to create it in just a few rather simple steps and without any hassle. Hepsia has a section dedicated to the DNS records of your domain names in which you can find all current records or set up new ones with a couple of mouse clicks. All it takes to achieve that is to select the domain/subdomain you want to change, pick AAAA for the type from a drop-down menu and input the actual record i.e. the IPv6 address which the other service provider has given you. Within an hour after you save the change, the new record will propagate worldwide and your Internet domain will start forwarding to the third-party web server. If they need it, you may also edit the TTL value, which indicates the time this record will be working with its present value before a new one takes over if you make any changes in the future.